Text file manipulation question.

Greetings All! I'm still in the learning stages of PHP and require some help with a small problem. I need to take a text file which looks like this (and no I can't get it output in CSV - damn and blast!)

user1               26:48:59       6 logins     4:28:09 hrs/login
user2               19:07:50     33 logins     0:34:46 hrs/login
user3               12:12:04     18 logins     0:40:40 hrs/login
user4                9:48:58       9 logins     1:05:26 hrs/login

What I want to do (in PHP) is read the list in and search for a username, then display the associated statistics for that user. I'm hoping to get the logistics right first before wrapping it in a form. Breaking it up into a list works well, except for the fact that the spaces between elements are not necessarily the same. (bother!) Any suggestions, like for example to convert a string of spaces (greater than 1) to a comma perhaps to facilitate easier list building? Cheers, Lloyd. :-) PS: I'm an old Coldfusion programmer who has seen the light....so I have the logics but can't translate it to PHP...therefore, I'm here! :-)